“Sir, it’s horrible these students who kill their teachers… Does that mean that the teachers have more confidence in us now?”, “And you, aren’t you afraid for yourself, Sir?” Monday October 16, Jordan Allory, who teaches history and geography near Nantes, has difficulty hiding his emotion in the face of his fifth grade class. These reactions follow the attack in Arras on October 13, during which literature professor Dominique Bernard was assassinated in his establishment by an Islamist terrorist. On this day of tribute, Jordan Allory, like his history colleagues, was present to try to shed light, to put into perspective, to say the right words, in short to exercise his profession like every day. Added emotion.
“Today, we are on the front line in two ways. Firstly, because our programs often resonate with current events and are sometimes difficult to teach. Secondly, because we know that the attacker in Arras aimed a history teacher”, explains the one who, that morning, had the class study the letter of Jean Jaurès to the teachers, that of Camus to his teacher Louis Germain, a caricature of the designer Plantu, the images of the companion of Agnès Lassalle – another teacher stabbed to death – dancing in front of her coffin and, finally, an extract from a letter from a colleague of Dominique Bernard. Three years earlier, it was already one of them, Samuel Paty, who had been targeted after a moral and civic education course, victim of a student’s lie and an infernal outburst on social networks.
“It is obvious that many of us feel apprehension. Some have adopted avoidance strategies that allow them to take some breathing space, to circumvent possible family pressures. Now, we need to be able to get out of that,” confirms Deborah Caquet, president of the Les Clionautes association, which brings together teachers of this discipline. This phenomenon of self-censorship would mainly concern agents working in priority education networks (REP) – twice as exposed to course challenges relating to secularism – and the youngest, aged under 30. Jordan Allory, who joined the ranks of National Education five years ago and who himself went through establishments classified as REP, claims to have never refrained from discussing the slightest subject with his students. “Even if, for some time now, we have undoubtedly been more vigilant about what we say, we pay great attention to the documents we select, to the analysis we provide. In our courses, there is no has no room for improvisation”, adds the young man, who makes a point of continuing to use the caricatures ofe Charlie Hebdo as an educational support when discussing freedom of expression. “But I always make sure to type and distribute the lesson in such a way as to have a written record and to avoid any deviation or false interpretation such as ‘the teacher said that…’ because we know what that can cause,” explains -he.
“Never react quickly”
For many, the ordeal experienced by Samuel Paty remains a trauma. How to respond to the doubts and fears of certain colleagues? For Deborah Caquet, the emphasis must be placed on initial and continuing training, because, “even once you pass the competition, there are a number of subjects in which you are not an expert, […] even more so when you are on a contractual basis, and we know that this status continues to progress,” she adds. Emphasize the difference between knowledge and beliefs with students. Explain that the teaching we instill in them does not has nothing to do with any personal opinions, but that it is based on solid, proven, sourced, cross-checked and scientifically proven facts: this must obviously be the line of conduct of any history teacher, who is also responsible for difficult task of dismantling the growing amount of misinformation conveyed by the Internet.
For Deborah Caquet, it is also urgent to think about the architecture of programs. “One of the difficulties sometimes encountered is that of memory competition. For example, some students do not understand that we spend a lot of time on the Shoah and less on the Armenian genocide. The programs are so busy that it is complicated for us to delve deeper into all the subjects,” she sighs. The risk ? That the teacher is tempted to respond to community requests and adapt his speech or his lessons according to the students in front of him. “We know very well that some of us can give in to a form of cultural or religious flattery to buy social peace, particularly when they are dealing with turbulent students,” underlines François De Sauza, co-founder of the Vigilance middle and high school network, which fights against attacks on secularism and educational freedom. The risk being that this will lead to a breakdown in equality in access to knowledge and that the education provided by public schools will lose its national character.
Another teacher of this discipline, who has worked in a reputedly “difficult” district of Val-d’Oise for around ten years and wishes to remain anonymous, deplores, for his part, that the media “always talk about the trains which arrive late [et] are doing too much on this subject.” “In my entire career, I have never had to deal with the difficulties you mention… Afterwards, it is possible that it could happen to certain less experienced colleagues,” says this history specialist. At the start of the year, the latter was questioned about the controversy surrounding the wearing of the abaya. “A complex subject which draws on history, geopolitics and law and which requires a long work of preparation and reflection in upstream. If you don’t go through these steps and respond promptly, you obviously expose yourself to slip-ups,” he warns. It’s also impossible to approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without solid semantic mastery. “Not knowing how to do it. the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah, or between Sunnism and Shiism, is a concern. Certain students, who are often in a provocative posture, and who can sometimes be imbued with this ‘atmospheric jihadism’ that historian Gilles Kepel speaks of, risk rushing into the breach created by these approximations,” adds the teacher in Val-d’Oise, for whom knowing how to control his class and maintain discipline is also one of the essential prerequisites.
“Killing a professor is an attack on freedom”
Gilles Roumieux, who teaches history in Alès, in the Gard, is convinced that, to interest and raise awareness among students, certain notions should be approached not “vertically” but rather in the form of concrete educational projects which make it possible to open up the debate. After the assassination of Samuel Paty, he encouraged his third graders to express their feelings, in order to free their speech and then to explain what the figure of the teacher represented for them. Which gave rise to a remarkable book, Don’t touch my teacher, prefaced by the sisters of Samuel Paty. “Why do Islamist terrorists attack schools?” he asked his classes again during the tribute to Dominique Bernard on October 16. Before answering: “Because killing a professor is attacking debate, freedom, what allows everyone to learn to think against themselves, to develop a certain critical spirit, to think independently, in short, to be master of your life.” Words that echo the content revealed by The world from an audio document, found in the phone of Mohammed Mogouchkov, the Islamist terrorist from Arras: “Oh French people, people of cowardice and unbelievers. I was in your schools for years and years, I lived for years and years among you, for free. […] You taught me about democracy and human rights, and you pushed me to hell.”
The school has no other choice but to stand together today, particularly to combat this terrible feeling of loneliness felt by many teachers. The “no waves” and the lack of support from the hierarchy are part of the reasons why some give in to self-censorship. “Why still talk about us? It amounts to putting a target on our backs. We, history teachers, are tired of people pointing the finger at us, accusing us of not doing our job well enough out of fear! Why never talk about other disciplines?” annoys this teacher from Yvelines. While they recognize that, through their training and experience, history teachers are well placed to teach subjects that have become sensitive, such as secularism or freedom of expression, many regret that we are essentially turning, or even only, towards them with each tragedy.
“We must get out of this professional culture where everyone acts according to their own agenda and their own concerns and where we tend to think that the problems of some do not concern others,” denounces Deborah Caquet, of Clionautes. Especially since other subjects, such as literature, life and earth sciences or philosophy, can also be subject to religious or community pressures. “The speech that we transmit is much more effective if it is repeated by all the teachers, if there is a form of cohesion on the principles and values that we teach”, insists François De Sauza , for whom certain avenues deserve to be encouraged, such as working in pairs or threes on certain aspects of the program or the organization of thematic days in which the entire middle and high school are invited to participate. And the history teacher insisted: “We do not want to be the only ones to be labeled ‘soldiers of the Republic’. The recent tragedies which have affected the school have proven that the mission which consists of defending our principles and our values concern us all.”